Jon Katz - A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me

A Dog Year

Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me

Jon Katz

Villard
New York

For Paula,
who loves dogs, but not this much

In our culture, humans with a special knack for animals have always been thought queer, or worse.

Learning a dogs worldview, altering it (within bounds), accepting a dogs understanding as sometimes more reliable than a mansthese commonplace tools of dog training are a mild cultural treason.... The truly dangerous inhabit a reality most of us can scarcely imagineevery day they share the thoughts, habits, tics and aspirations of a genuinely alien mind.

Donald McCaig,
Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men

Introduction

Perfect Harmony

When I was in the fourth grade, I got up before dawn one morning, braving a bitter winter in Providence, Rhode Island, and headed for my elementary school to be sure that I was first in line.

The school janitor was giving away a puppy.

I waited, shivering, for several hours, fighting to defend my spot against some enormous sixth-graders. But I held my ground and brought home Lucky, also shivering, in a cardboard box. It was the happiest day of my life.

I cant remember what kind of dog he was, only that wed had him for a few weeks when he got distemper, then disappeared. My parents told me that he was sick and had to recover on a farm out in the country, where he could roam freely.

Weeks later, in response to my badgering and increasingly agitated demands to visit him, my father told me that Lucky was very sick and would have to stay on the farm for a long time, perhaps for good. Then he took me to Rigneys Ice Cream Parlor on Hope Street and bought me a black raspberry cone. Excursions with my father were a rare thing, reserved for the most extraordinary occasions. My father never said a word as we slurped our cones, and neither did I.

I was young but not stupid. It would be years before I loved any dog that much again.

Next came Sam, the first dog who was more or less mine. He was an iron-willed basset hound with whom my mother warred relentlessly over where he slept (on my bed), where he napped (on the new living room sofa), and what he ate (anything that wasnt locked away).

Sam was fearless. Every time my mother pulled into the driveway, she looked up to see him relaxing on the new sofa, located in the bay window on the side of the house. By the time she rushed inside, hed be sitting innocently on the floor, but she whaled him with a rolled-up newspaper anyway. I admired the way Sam stood up to her tirades and temper and took his medicine. He never flinched, ran, or hid; nor did he ever stop dozing on the couch.

One Friday night, with about fifteen members of our extended family gathered around my mothers new dining room table, which sat proudly atop a new Oriental carpet she had saved for years to buy, Sam calmly strolled up, put his front paws on the table, clamped his strong jaws onto the steaming pot roast, and yanked it away.

My grandmother, who didnt believe that Jews ought to have dogs in the first place, started screaming in Yiddish.

Clearly Sams plan was to light out for the basementthe door was just a few feet awaywhere hed wolf down as much meat as possible before the authorities caught up with him. He never got that far.

My mother, shrieking in fury, headed him off at the kitchen doorway and Sam led her on a desperate chase around the table, dragging the meat with him, leaving a trail of gravy and grease along her new carpet.

I dont know how long this would have gone onwe were all too astonished by Sams daring act to move, and my sister and I were silently rooting for him anywaybut my big brother finally knocked his chair over to block Sams route and tackled him.

Even as he went down and was hauled off in a din of curses, whacks, and recriminations, Sam was gobbling as much of the entre as he could. He had calculated the price, weighed the odds, and gone for it. Sam was the bravest dog I ever knew.

His obstinacy could be irritating, of course. Every night, Sam climbed onto my bed, positioned himself between me and the wall, and began pushing me toward the edge. But if I tried to shove him back, hed nip my hand and growl me away. Once or twice a week hed muscle me right off onto the floor. If anybody came in to see what caused the thump, Sam would be snoring peacefully.

We moved to New Jersey when I was in high school. In the days of packing and farewells beforehand, Sam suddenly vanished. My mother was vague about where he had gone. At first, she said, she had tried to give him to a neighbor, but hed immediately bitten every person in the family, which sounded like Sam, all right. So shed found him a farm in northern Rhode Island where he could, she said, roam freely.

I wish I had gotten to say goodbye.

There have been others. Before Lucky, my family had included a foul-tempered German shepherd named King, who regularly took off after milkmen and mail carriers until my mother sorrowfully had to send him away. After my wife and I married, we adopted a russet-colored mutt named Bean who looked like a fox. She kept us faithful company for years but was more my wifes dog than mine. Clarence was a crotchety golden retriever bought on impulse at a puppy mill; I loved him despite his grumpiness and many health problems.

Once in a great while, however, the right person is fortunate enough to get the right dog, to have the time to take care of it, to connect with it in a profound way. It takes a confluence of luck and timing, being at a particular point in life that coincides with the nature, breeding, and disposition of a particular dog. By the spring of 2000, I was lucky enough to have not one but two dogs with whom I had come to live in great harmony, two genial, purebred yellow Labrador retrievers Id gotten from a breeder in northern New Jersey.

All the things that needed to converge did. I was working at home, writing. The dogs were attentive, smart, calm, and loving. They also had that meditative Lab quality of being able to disappear into themselves for extended periods, leaving me in peace when I needed it.

I hired a trainer to train me, to teach me to teach them how to come, sit, stay, lie down, and walk reliably beside me without leashes. Professional dog trainers and handlers understand that their real work is to train dogs owners. Dogs more or less know what they need to do. The issue is almost always how to communicate what you want from them, in a positive yet effective way. It cost a few hundred dollars, and most people will tell you it isnt worth it, but they are dead wrong. When it comes to dogs, it was the best buy of my life, returning the cost with interest in myriad ways.

We hardly had a bad moment, the three of us, so neatly did we fit together, interlocking pieces of the puzzle that is the varied partnership between humans and dogs.

Julius and Stanley embodied the noblest characteristics of their proud breed. They were handsome, loyal, utterly dependable, and affectionate. Julius came first. My daughter was young, and while there are different viewpoints about this, I personally dont believe theres a more rewarding moment for a parent than handing a happy, squirming, doe-eyed Lab puppy over to a small kid. I carry the look on her face in my memory, and while there are times when I cant remember what day of the week it is, I can always recall the wonder and joy in her eyes as if it had just happened.